The Greatest Traitor: The Life of Sir Roger Mortimer, 1st Earl of March (11 page)

But then occurred one of those deaths which rocked society to its foundations. Gaveston, the Earl of Cornwall, had returned from exile in early 1312, and aroused such hostility that he was forced to give himself up to the Earl of Pembroke. The earl had sworn an oath to surrender his lands and titles to protect the man’s life. But the Earls of Lancaster, Arundel and Warwick did not care what the Earl of Pembroke had sworn or stood to lose. In June they kidnapped the king’s brother-in-arms while he was in the earl’s protection.

And they killed him.

FOUR

Bannockburn and Kells

GAVESTON’S MURDER TORE
the country in two. Even those who had been most opposed to the man were horrified. The three earls had killed the king’s dearest friend. Bloody retribution seemed inevitable. Those responsible stood to lose their lands, their titles and their lives.

The Earl of Lancaster made no attempt to shift the blame from himself. From the moment Gaveston had arrived back in England Lancaster had hounded the king and his brother-in-arms. Gaveston had joined the king at York in February, where they remained until Margaret de Clare, Gaveston’s wife and Edward’s niece, gave birth to a daughter, Joan. In March, with the baronage and earls convinced now that war was certain, Thomas of Lancaster had openly assumed the leadership of the opposition to Gaveston, and gave the Earls of Pembroke and Surrey the task of leading an army to capture him. Gaveston knew the risk he was taking by remaining in the country, not least because he had been excommunicated by the Archbishop of Canterbury on his return. But he decided nevertheless to stay in England. He chose to remain with Edward despite all the dangers. Edward, joyful that his beloved would not leave him, joined him at Newcastle at the end of March.

Edward and Gaveston may have thought that the opposition they would face would be unorganised, slow to muster and reluctant to start a civil war. Despite many harsh words, no one had yet actually taken up arms against them. But this time things were different. The Earl of Lancaster – the man whom Gaveston had mocked with the title of ‘the Fiddler’ – now used his authority to gather his own feudal army. He marched north, hiding his army by day and moving by night in order to escape notice. On 4 May he approached Newcastle. Edward and Gaveston were taken wholly by surprise and had to flee suddenly by ship to Scarborough Castle. In so doing they left everything behind: jewels, money, horses, soldiers and arms. Lancaster took the lot.

For the time being Edward and Gaveston were safe. But then Edward made a fatal mistake: he left Gaveston in Scarborough Castle while he went south to raise an army. The Earl of Lancaster quickly moved to place his forces between the king and the favourite, thereby separating Gaveston
from all hope of aid. On 19 May, Gaveston, fearing the Earl of Lancaster would kill him, agreed to submit to Henry Percy and the Earls of Pembroke and Surrey. The Earl of Pembroke took responsibility for escorting Gaveston back to London. But at Deddington in Oxfordshire, Gaveston was kidnapped by the Earl of Warwick and taken to Warwick Castle. For the next nine days he was held there until the Earl of Lancaster arrived. Lancaster’s advice as to what to do next was the cold-hearted sentence Gaveston so feared: ‘While he lives there will be no safe place in the realm of England.’
¹
On 19 June Gaveston was taken to Blacklow Hill, land belonging to the Earl of Lancaster, and two Welshmen killed him. One ran him through the body with a sword, then the other hacked off his head as he lay dying on the grass.

The country went into shock. Every lord and knight throughout the realm readied for war. The Earl of Pembroke was beside himself, having sworn an oath to protect Gaveston’s life on penalty of forfeiting his lands and titles. In the days between Gaveston’s capture and murder Pembroke desperately tried to raise an army to free him, even appealing to the University of Oxford, who, besides not being known for their military strength, were not remotely concerned with Gaveston’s wellbeing or the earl’s plight. The country was not prepared to fight to save Gaveston, who had done nothing to make himself popular with the common people.

Edward’s own reaction to the murder was utter rage, which very quickly became cold fury.
²
On hearing of Gaveston’s death he remarked, ‘By God’s soul, he acted as a fool. If he had taken my advice he never would have fallen into the hands of the earls. This is what I always told him not to do. For I guessed that what has now happened would occur.’
³
But his remonstrance of his dead friend masked a depth of grief which would never leave him, and which was compounded by his sense of betrayal at the hands of his cousin, Lancaster, who was now far beyond forgiveness. His mind became focused on the destruction of the earls who had acted against him, and, given strength through grief, he thought and acted more clearly. With Gaveston dead, there was nothing more for the vast majority of the rebels to gain from opposing him. He stopped the earls marching on London by forewarning the city, shutting the gates against all comers, and defending its hinterland. The rebel earls, unable to seize the initiative, lingered at Ware, in Hertfordshire, their position growing weaker by the day. Edward meanwhile received help from all quarters. The Pope sent an embassy, as did the King of France, and lords and bishops came to his assistance to give him counsel and, if necessary, force of arms.

We do not know exactly when Roger returned from Ireland, and it could have been as late as January 1313; but there is every reason to suppose
that he was brought back by news of Gaveston’s death. Not only was he a loyal lord, he was also experienced in battle. If the king himself did not summon him back, no doubt his kinsman, the Earl of Pembroke, did. By mid-July Lord Pembroke was advising the king to declare war on the rebel earls, a policy which necessitated the return from Ireland of as many loyal men as were available. Also, since the Earl of Lancaster had set himself against Lord Mortimer of Chirk, Roger and his uncle needed to be in England to defend their estates from the armies of the rebel earls and their allies.

War did not break out immediately. Edward was in no hurry, for the longer he waited, the stronger he became. The earls too were reluctant to declare war on the king, an act for which they would undoubtedly lose their lives if defeated. While the earls demanded that they be pardoned for the death of Gaveston, on account of his illegal return from exile, the king made agreements and alliances with others. In November his position was greatly strengthened by the birth of a son and heir, Edward. This removed Thomas of Lancaster even further from the succession, and provoked an outbreak of patriotism in the country. The best that the earls could do was to negotiate, and hope that the king’s resolve would weaken.

Roger played no part in the negotiations which began in September 1312. Indeed it is difficult to determine what exactly he was doing at this period. The only piece of evidence so far to have come to light is a reference to a payment to Roger of £100 ordered on 2 April 1313 at Westminster, ‘for his expenses in Gascony’.
⁴
There are a number of possible explanations for this. One is his undertaking some personal service for the king. He could have been returning something or someone of Gaveston’s household to Gascony. However, Gascony at this time suddenly flared up in a conflict between Amanieu d’Albret and the English seneschal, John de Ferrers, and it is more likely that Roger was sent to deal with this. De Ferrers had abused his position in 1312 to attack d’Albret with an army of four thousand men. D’Albret had appealed to King Philip, and the king had judged in his favour, sentencing King Edward to pay a large sum in compensation. De Ferrers died, possibly as a result of poison, in September 1312. A third possibility is that Roger acted on behalf of his kinsman, the Earl of Pembroke, in some business connected with the Count of Foix in Gascony, which the king had asked Pembroke to attend to in January 1313.
⁵
In considering these three possibilities, it is worth bearing in mind that Amanieu d’Albret was a relative of Roger’s wife, Joan, and the man appointed to replace de Ferrers as Seneschal of Gascony, Amaury de Craon, was also a relative of Joan.
⁶
Whatever the reason, it is clear that
Roger was wholly loyal at this time, and actively so, being trusted with overseas royal business.

*

If there was one single measure of how the government of the country weakened during the first six years of Edward’s reign, it was his policy failure in Scotland. No doubt he associated war in Scotland with his father, the ‘Hammer of the Scots’, and there was probably a personal element in his reluctance to continue his father’s campaigns there. But each year Robert Bruce had made incursions into English territory, and Edward had done little to stop him. Bruce, who had learnt his hard craft of resistance against Edward I, one of the most formidable practitioners of the art of war, now showed how well he had learnt from his years of opposition. He did not have the numbers to defeat the English in open battle, so he and his men harried them, and terrorised the garrisons, and laid waste all they could in the hope that Edward would decide Scotland was simply too great a problem and withdraw. Such a strategy was unchivalrous, perhaps, but effective. And its effectiveness was increased by Edward’s reluctance to launch a Scottish campaign. Indeed, during Gaveston’s lifetime, he only organised Scottish campaigns in order to deflect attention from his political problems in England.

Bruce knew that the key to controlling Scotland was to control the castles. The Scottish forces could ransack manors held by men loyal to the English king, but, unless they held the castles, theirs would only be a temporary grip on the land. Thus, one by one, Bruce attacked the English garrisons. Castle after castle fell to the Scottish grappling irons. Had this happened in Edward I’s time, efforts would have been made to retake them, but in his son’s reign fallen castles were not recaptured. Edward II saw the taking of a castle as a symbolic act, largely undertaken to improve his political position in England. He understood little of the strategy necessary to maintain control of an unquiet country, and cared for it even less.

By 1312 more than the symbolic recapturing of a few castles was required. Robert Bruce and his brother Edward had systematically attacked English fortifications with a will and an audacity which had won them the love as well as the loyalty of their fellow men. After Dundee fell in spring 1312, Perth was the only fortress left in English hands north of the Forth. In the summer of that year Edward Bruce attacked the minor strongholds of Forfar, Dalswinton and Caerlaverock, with some success. In the winter Robert Bruce himself commanded an extremely audacious attack on Berwick, the castle nearest to England. He was thwarted, but his method of attack was new, effective and ingeniously simple. Rather than attach
ropes to grappling irons to scale the castle walls, the Scots attached rope ladders. These had the advantage over wooden ladders in that they could be carried by one man for long distances on horseback, and were better than mere ropes for they permitted a far swifter ascent, and allowed the assailants to use their weapons more freely. They also allowed far swifter escape: at Berwick Bruce would have surprised the garrison but for a dog which heard the rattle of the grappling irons and barked, so that the garrison awoke and the alarm was raised. On that occasion the Scots fled, leaving their rope ladders dangling from the walls.

While Edward II was ranting against the earls for the murder of Gaveston, Bruce moved straight on to his next attack. From Berwick on the English border he took his men to the most northern point of English control: the great castle at Perth. He laid siege to the castle openly, but during the nights of the siege his men discovered the shallowest point in the town moat. After a few days they withdrew. To the garrison it appeared that the Scots had decided against attacking the castle, and they relaxed their guard. But a week later, on the particularly dark night of 8 January 1313, Bruce returned with his men and their rope ladders. That night Bruce himself slipped into the dark, icy water up to his neck, and waded forward. A few moments later, he pulled himself out of the water and rapidly climbed his ladder. Once inside, with the advantage of surprise, his men quickly overcame resistance.

Had it been Edward II who had captured the castle, he would have spent a week feasting to celebrate his success. Bruce hardly paused for a moment. He knew that the more he could conquer now, the stronger he would be when the next English army came north. After taking Perth, Bruce took his men to Dumfries; within a month he had managed to starve the castle and town into submission. It was probably soon after news of this disaster reached the king at London that men began to urge on him the importance of a Scottish campaign, and Roger secured the release of the de Verdon rebels to that end. But still Edward did not act. And then Robert Bruce sent his brother against Stirling Castle, the most strategically important of them all.

Edward Bruce was a competent soldier, and no fool, but he was not a military genius like his brother. There was little chance of him forcing Stirling Castle into surrender: it was so strongly defended, so well supplied and so shrewdly commanded by Sir Philip de Mowbray that his army might have waited many months outside the walls. But when de Mowbray (a Scotsman loyal to Edward) observed the lack of English determination to relieve him, he suggested the following terms: if the English had not come within three miles of the castle with a relieving army within a year,
he would freely hand over the castle to the Scottish king. Edward Bruce accepted.

Robert Bruce was furious when he discovered the terms to which his brother had agreed. The current run of Scottish success was entirely due to the failure of the English to bring a large army into Scotland. Now his brother had ensured that the English would advance within twelve months. Just as it was nearing completion, with only a few castles left to capture, Bruce’s strategy of piecemeal conquest had been undermined by his own brother.